Most of the Chanuka stories you'll probably be reading this
year were written either shortly before the chag, or
shortly after last year's. This is not one of those stories.
This story is being written a good month and a half before
Chanuka. Why now? Because most truly meaningful experiences
require a period of personal preparation. The Yomim Noraim
have this period practically mandated by halochoh.
Pesach features at least thirty days, if not some months, of
gradually cleaning the chometz from our homes and
souls. Succos involves the clumsy construction of a temporary
structures to replace the sturdy homes built by qualified non-
Jewish labor in which we usually live. But Chanuka's
preparation period often begins just a few days before, when
I purchase a bottle of fine olive oil and a not- so-fine
aluminum-molding menorah. You know the ones.
I'm beginning my Chanuka preparation now because it's about a
month into the winter zman, and the real meaning of
Chanuka is gradually beginning to make itself apparent. I'll
explain. Winter zman is not easy. It's the longest of
the year and by the time you read this, my pale complexion
will have faded to an eerie green. The sun sets increasingly
early. On a good day, you can only reasonably expect 45
minutes of actual exposure to it, and that's if you're a slow
walker.
Then there's the matter of how to distinguish your black
plastic umbrella from the other 4,000 black plastic umbrellas
in the coatroom. Everyone has their own system. I have one
clever friend who says he achieves this by not owning one. I
said he was clever, not practical. I use a torn-off strip of
labeled notebook paper preserved beneath a layer of clear
packing tape. It's not exactly my style, but there's
something beautifully utilitarian about it. So far, it's kept
my umbrella where it belongs, that is, above my head. Many
prefer the colorful stickers normally used on gemoras,
and I imagine that works too.
The same challenge exists for raincoats, jackets and of
course, hats. My friend Yitz once found a big wad of cash in
his jacket after leaving it in the yeshiva coatroom. He
returned to the coat room, found the exact same jacket from
the exact same company and left a note in it for the money's
[probable] real owner.
Sometimes I think it would just be more efficient if we
developed a communal system in which hats and jackets would
all be returned to size-specific coat racks and you could
just take the first one that comes to hand. I know this isn't
such a novel idea but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't
work. I once heard a certain Mizrachi relative of mine ask
his yeshivish nephew how, indeed, "can you tell the
difference between your hat, and the rest of them?" "Oh, we
just take whichever one's on top." Everyone should have
cousins like mine.
Coming into yeshiva in the morning, one can get to feeling a
little out-of-body. You slept five hours last night and now
you're walking down the hallway towards someone who also did
and who's wearing exactly the same thing as you, with the
same umbrella, and the same expression. Just as you've
started to figure out that you're you and he's him, and not
vice-versa, you brush past him and spill your coffee. Of
course, there's a method to the madness. All the uniformity
works to create a sort of understated group cohesiveness.
Every group that has a shared goal has a uniform. The Post
Office. The Marines. Yeshivas Mir. At times, a long winter
zman can feel like a war, as can yeshiva in general.
It's a war against outside evil and a war against inner
weakness. There are advances and setbacks, victories and
defeats. You need to jointly maintain an incredibly rigorous
schedule, and the minimum degree of wellbeing required to
make it all possible. You come home most nights frozen,
soaked, exhausted and smiling that half insane smile your
wife is just learning not to be afraid of. You believe your
efforts will pay off but the advancement is slow. So slow,
that a person can almost get discouraged. This is where
Chanuka comes in.
Yovon certainly lost the battle, but the war is still being
fought. It is today, as it was then; a spiritual and
intellectual attack. The Greek Empire may be but a memory,
but their tradition is alive and well on liberal university
campuses throughout the world. They are the students of
Epicurus, the Greek philosopher after whom the term
apikorus was coined. They're big, organized,
incredibly well funded and ferociously devoted to their
dogma. They're also amazingly influential over the moral
direction the overall society takes. All this, combined with
the fact that even the largest yeshiva on earth is roughly
the size of a petite community college, is nothing short of
terrifying. When you think about it, we're still a group of
outnumbered renegades, and it's a bigger miracle than ever
that we persist.
As the longest zman of the year, winter holds
potential that no two contiguous zmanim could ever
rival. The most successful campaigns are those waged
undauntedly and without interruption. The culmination of the
learning week is night seder on Thursdays. This often
lasts into the early morning.
Friday is spent recovering and preparing for Shabbos. Shabbos
is spent enjoying precious free time with your family. Then
it all starts again. Every week is a magical cycle of growth,
rest and renewal, but after a while they can take on a
monotonous undertone, and it can look as if the advance is
languishing. Then, out of the darkness, comes Chanuka, a
reminder that it can, and actually has, been won.
This year, when I pour the oil and light the menorah, I will
look across the street at the glowing windows of my neighbors
and try to receive the message I'm being sent. As dark as the
winter may look, it's not as bad as what the enemy would
like. Pirsumei Nisa is not just about remembering the
miracles that were done for us so long ago, it's about
recognizing the struggle in which we are all still very much
entrenched and the miracles that are happening right now.
What makes both the intellectual and social struggle possible
is the sacrifice of thousands of kollel families who
directly trade materialism for their avodoh, on a
daily basis. The Lexus for the bus. The designer suit for
something called Bagir. The steak for the mysterious grey
tofu wads they serve in yeshiva. Yes, they're almost as bad
as they sound, but I dare say it's worth it. You learn all
day. It's the final frontier of true scholarly greatness,
truth and purity and you're a part of it. You're part of the
revolution.
I've been accused of romanticizing the whole thing, but
everyone should have something they romanticize, and since
this is what I'm spending most of my life's energy on at the
moment, I think I have a right. I imagine that if I were
picking olives instead of learning in kollel, I would
figure out how that is really the fight against Greek
culture, which, by the way, I imagine it could be. But it
really is pretty stirring.
At about nine fifteen, when the yeshiva buses unload their
fare on Shmuel Hanovi, there is what can only be described as
what looks like a uniformed militia marching into battle,
which, in a sense, it is.
